Math In the Kitchen

One of my favorite activities with the boys is to let them help me bake in the kitchen. They love to get out the bowls and the measuring cups and often fight over who is going to do what. Like most homeschooling mommies, I try to make everything an educational lesson when I can. Cooking is such an excellent way to teach kiddos about fractions. Jonathan was having a hard time understanding what the numbers meant so I pulled out a 1/8, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 and 1 Cup. I then asked him how many of the 1/8 cups it would take to fill the Cup..he wasn't sure, so I told him to fill the 1/8 cup with water, dump it into the 1 Cup and see how many it took. He was fascinated that it took EIGHT cups to do that so we said that this cup equals 1/8 of a full cup. We repeated this exercise with the remaining cups and when it came time to measure 3/4 of milk for the biscuits for the pigs in the blanket, he was ready to go and knew what the numbers meant!! I also use our cooking time to teach vocabulary, reading and of course home economics!! Yes...I mean..we had a lot of fun baking boys...now we need to clean it all up!! Have a Blessed Day!!